LIE: Gov. Walker says he's just helping the worker when he argues for elimination of the "dues check-off," saying the workers would have more disposable income.
TRUTH: Eliminating dues check-off would cripple unions, which would have to rely solely upon voluntary contributions.
LIE: Gov. Walker enjoys wide-spread support for his stand against the unions.
TRUTH: Walker has been governor less than two months. If the election were repeated, he'd receive only about 45 percent of the vote, according to the independent Public Policy Polling (PPP) of Raleigh, N.C. More important, while only 3 percent of Republicans voted for Tom Barratt, the Democratic candidate in the November election, 10 percent of the Republicans say they'd vote for him in a new election, according to PPP. The Republican governors of Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Indiana have said they will not follow Walker's lead, and will support the rights of public workers to bargain collectively. The massive protests in Wisconsin--more than 100,000 in Madison on the same day--and throughout the nation give evidence that Walker doesn't have the popularity he and his supporters believe. A New York Times/CBS poll, released March 1, indicates only about one-third of the nation supports the campaign against public sector collective bargaining. A week earlier, an independent USA Today/Gallup poll had almost the same results.
LIE: The protestors are unruly, and should be arrested for violating the law.
TRUTH : The First Amendment gives people the right to assemble peacefully. There have been no arrests because there have been no crimes committed by the protestors. Further, when the governor and the Legislature demanded that protestors be thrown out of the state capitol, and not allowed to stay overnight, the chief of the Capitol Police refused to do so, believing the order was a violation of Constitutional rights. In contrast, Walker had actually considered, and then rejected, the idea of planting troublemakers among the protestors--a "dirty trick" that dates back to the '60s.
LIE: Public sector union workers are overpaid.
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